Fall Autumn Moon
Are you ready for some football? OK. I turned the Vikes on, just to see how bad it was. They were ahead. Of the 49’ers. Who beat Green Bay in their opening game. What?
So, I watched some more. They looked good. Not great. But, pretty damn good. I can get excited about pretty good. We’ll see. I know.
Lugnasa Garlic Planting Moon
Here’s one I didn’t see coming. Picked up my alumi magazine (how do they always know where I am) to discover that my modest teacher’s college turned into Ball State University is #1 in…wait for it…quidditch! That’s right, quidditch.
These are games in 2012. Gosh, gee whillikers, go Horcrux! That’s the team name.
Ball State University 260
Miami University of Ohio 20
Ball State University 110
Eastern Michigan University 40
Ball State University 120
TCS Chimeras 0
Ball State University 140
Jetpack Ninja Dinosaurs 50
Ball State University 120
Eastern Michigan University 30
Turns out there is a national Quidditch Championship, the first was in 2007 in Vermont.
Irony was not a real big component of campus life at Ball State when I was there in the late 60’s, but it’s there now. Look at this.
Lugnasa Garlic Planting Moon
Thank you Vikings for continuing to free up time on Sundays later this fall. I think I might take that online course on mythology. Don’t know why, but as a fair weather fan, I’m willing to come back if you show me some winning football.
Guess in the end I’m a transplant when it comes to football, even though I’ve been here over 40 years. The Vikes are just not enough my team to keep me interested in the rebuilding years.
Friday workouts are intense. My back, my legs, my shoulders and chest all feeling it this morning.
Today’s a cooking day, so I’m off to the grocery store.
Oh. One more thing. Kate and I did watch Vikings last night, the Vikings in How To Train Your Dragon. Much more entertaining than the football bunch.
Lugnasa Hiroshima Moon
The beach-volleyball Olympics. That’s how I’ll the remember games of the last Olympiad. Seemed like every time Kate or I turned on the TV, which we rarely do these days, to watch, there was Kerri and Mitzi. Wearing bikinis. Battling other well-toned women from various places: China, Australia, Italy.
Then there was the closing day. What was the lead off memory piece? Beach volleyball. And a lot of it.
Not sure, but the amount of skin might have had something to do with it? Also not sure, had I ever watched a complete beach volleyball match before? Yes, they were good. Yes, it was athletic and tiring. But beach volleyball and BMX racing? Guess the young, male watcher must be sought after.
I liked Usain and his bow and arrow impressions. Michael Phelps, collecting himself from a loss right out of the blocks. Boudina coming back from 18th to win gold. OK, I didn’t watch that because diving, as I said before, doesn’t grab me, but still.
Having the US, plucky little country, come out with more medals that great big rising superpower, China, did tickle my nationalistic pride. Maybe a bit too much though our scattershot funding model does pale beside the state run models of China and Russia.
The opening ceremony. It was the best I’ve ever seen. It renewed a serious case of Anglophilia and reminded me that I’ve spent a good bit of the last ten years gazing east, reading Chinese books, getting educated about Asian art, traveling in Southeast Asia. Might be time to revisit Dickens, the Pre-Raphs, English history.
There is a bit of push-back in me though; it comes from the genetic Celt within and the miserable track-record (sorry about that one) the English have with Ireland, Scotland, Wales, the Isle of Mann, even old Cornwall. Even so, their xenophobia does not need to blind me to their culture achievements. A renewal of that will probably be the lasting impact of this Olympics for me.
It’s big! It’s 365, 24/7. It’s the Sports Show.
And yet. Not as many people tuned in as we might have expected. Lots of pondering, head scratching, here’s what I woulda dones.
My guess? Sports folks were shy of the show because it was in an art museum and art folks were shy of the show because it had sports as the advertised content. Anyone in either group who didn’t make it to the museum to see it missed out on a wonderful, challenging story about media and sport.
This was a great year for the Minneapolis Institute of Arts with Edo Pop leading the way, an imaginative and beautiful showcasing of the museum’s collection of ukiyo-e art and its afterlife in contemporary Japan. The Sports Show was the second MIA exhibition of the year, this time showcasing the thoughtful curator of photography, David Little.
When first chosen to tour this show, all I had to go on was the title: The Sports Show. I imagined, well, I can’t recall quite what I imagined, but it wasn’t a positive imagine. Sports and the MIA? I couldn’t make the connection.
Well, I can now. This show, apparently about sports, in fact takes the measure of media as it interacts with a specific segment of culture, a segment uniquely suited to its strengths. Media can stop action, make it go faster, slower, allow us to see again, and again if we want, a moment of unusual grace, controversy or excitement.
David Little’s choices lead us through the gradual evolution of the special relationship between the functional advantages of media, capturing events that often happen faster than we see or in places we can’t get to, or from angles to which we don’t have access even if we are present in person. This relationship, headed toward the full blown marital moment of the Sports Show, the spectacle that is today’s always on access to sports, has not only a purely technical story, but a cultural story as well.
When the cameras began to flash, like in the early days of basketball shown in Frances Benjamin Watson’s cyanotype of women learning the game in 1896, and as the images produced got fed into the ever hungry mouths of printing presses grinding out newspapers and magazines, the images and the moments they documented became part of the historical record.
That record included Roger Bannister breaking the tape and the four-minute mile, Y.A. Tittle’s very public moment of private despair, Jesse Owens in the 1936 Olympics, amazing technical advances by two servants of the 20th century’s most radical political ideologies, fascism and communism and the eerie moment, at the end of the 1966 Soccer World Cup, when the victorious British crowd sang When the Saints Come Marching In to be answered by the German crowd’s rendition of the 1st verse of the German National Anthem, the so-called Hitler verse. (note that this was not photography or videography but recorded sound)
The record also included fall after fall after fall after fall of boxers, anonymous and unconscious in the moments before they hit the canvas, underscoring Joyce Carol Oates wonderful line from the exhibition catalog, “You play basketball, you play baseball, but nobody plays boxing.”
While great photographers like Robert Mapplethorpe and Richard Avedon produced iconic images of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Lew Alcindor, highlighting the mythmaking possibilities in the special relationship, other artists recorded images whose valence changed through time, exposing attitudes toward race. The 1977 video work focused on OJ Simpson could not be seen without first passing through the later experience of his trial.
This show limns a love story, featuring a long courtship with many twists and turns, but one ending in a final spectacular wedding of photography, video, media distribution and the never-ending, literally now never-ending, story of sports throughout the world.
Thanks, David. It was an honor to represent your vision to MIA visitors.
Spring Bee Hiving Moon
ESL tour was wonderful. When asked if they recognized any of the objects, the response from the Vietnamese and Cambodians, “No. The old people, they know about that. But not us.” At a Hmong piece, I asked one young woman a question. Her reply. “I no sprek Engrish.”
Still, it was obvious that seeing these objects from their home cultures resonated with them, and gave a hook, a place to return to later. I suggested bringing some of the old people along.
My Sports Show tour only had 2 people, but it went well. I transited backwards, starting with Zidane again and found, again, that it made the tour livelier, more engaging.
Bought a short book on Symbolist art for lunch time reading. Some interesting insights. I’ll share them later.
Imbolc Woodpecker Moon
Two sports show tours today. The first, a public 11:30, had nobody show. Not surprising at 11:30 on a beautiful spring day. 72 degrees today. Sunny.
1:00 pm tour had 5 people, but they were all into the show. Had great discussions. Folks said, well, after seeing this we’ll have conversations about constitutes art. I’m not as interactive so far as I might be, will have to think about that.
Once again entered the Pfieffer from the video first. Makes much more sense. This crowd loved the piece, the immersion in the sound and its evocation of childhood sports events.
I made a simple changed in spectacle gallery that made reception of the upstate NY olympics much more favorable. I showed folks the Gursk large format photograph of the boxing match and Diane Arbus’ shot of a downs syndrome girl first. Then, we went to the upstate NY olympics and its ironic twist on the nature of sports spectacle was apparent.
I apologize to those of you who don’t know the show but the pieces I’m talking about are installations: a sound piece in the Pfieffer instance and a video piece in upstate NY olympics case. Hard to describe in words which is, of course, part of their reason for existence.
Imbolc Woodpecker Moon
My first Sports Show tour tomorrow. 1 pm. This show, as one docent friend said, is “a different animal.” It attracts a sporting audience for sure, whether it attracts the arts audience is not so clear. At least those are the reports I’ve been getting from docents who’ve toured it already.
I’m prepared, but in some ways I expect to wing it, since a sports focused group would be very different from an arts focused group. I look forward to either one. I like this show, as I’ve said before, so I’m interested to see how it works with museum goers.
Wedding bells are breaking up that old gang of mine. Only they’re not wedding bells, they’re post-retirement living arrangements. Woolly Jim Johnson headed west to the plains of South Dakota several years ago. He comes to the retreats and at least one meeting each year.
Woolly Paul Strickland and his wife Sarah, friends of mine for over 30 years, have decided to shift their home to their property in Maine, close to the Bay of Fundy. Woolly Charlie Haislet will begin to split his time between St. Paul (a new condo) and his cabin in Wisconsin. Paul says he’ll be back for retreats, and I imagine he will, but all these moves will change the character of our group.
Probably the more amazing story is that we’ve stayed essentially stable for 25 years. None of these moves were unexpected, and for those making them, they signal an accomplishment. More third phase stuff at work.
Imbolc Garden Planning Moon
Still plugging away at 1,500 words a day. The novel is sort of baggy right now. Lots of words, probably, as the Emperor famously said to Mozart, too many words. I’m not quite at the Mozart level where I can comfortably say every word is necessary. I’m not even in the Salieri league. Hell, I’m at best playing Legion ball, hoping for a look from the scouts.
Which is not to say, however, that it will not improve. This novel will receive much more attention after I finish the rough draft. Much more. It will reach a point where it contains as many words as I mean it to have, no more, no less.
This time I’m eager to get to the rewriting. Writing is in the rewriting. Though this blog rarely gets rewritten.
So, the superbowl. Well, I don’t have a dog in this fight. Haven’t had a football dog since the late, great now permanently retired Brett Favre returned for one season too many. I like having Sunday afternoons free in the winter.
As to the weather. Hell.
Lughnasa Waxing Honey Extraction Moon
“Those who go overseas find a change of climate, not a change of soul.” – Horace
Horace has an early version here of wherever you go, there you are. My brother has carried the same soul with him from the soi of Bangkok to the exurbs of the Twin Cities.
Mark, Kate and I took off through the beautiful backroads of northern Anoka county and made it, after a couple of years of talking about it, to the Running Aces Harness Track. I’m not kidding about northern Anoka county, much of it is as interesting and as attractive as the northern part of the state. There are large stretches of marsh land and forest, small lakes, pine trees and surprisingly few development thanks to a generally high water table. Driving back in the night it was exactly like traveling on county roads in Cook County.
Running Aces. A subculture, harness racing has a lovely track here with plenty of seating and parimutuel betting. When you drive up, there is a big port cochere, much like the entrance to a resort hotel. On the benches around the curve of the drive a man sat hunched over smoking, his peroxide blonde hair mussed, as if he had been running his hands through it. Just inside the glass doors a floor to ceiling painting commemorates Minnesota’s harness racing legend, Dan Patch.
Floor to ceiling glass doors allow a glimpse of the harness track off to the left, it’s gravel covered surface banked and curved. In the middle of a half moon layout and up on a raised floor was the off track betting area where races throughout the country showed up on several flat screens mounted one next to the other. A woman with bottle red hair, a jean-jacket and sequined cowboy boots passed betting slips to a middle-aged man with an impressive paunch. They studied them, trying to read the runes.
At the right lies the card room. Several Asian folks played Pai Gow Poker, an Americanized version of a game originally played with Mahjhong tiles. There were black jack tables, the James Bond favorite, baccarat, a Mississippi river boat table and several, perhaps 12 or 14 tables filled with 8 players each engaged in Texas Hold’em, the dominant form of poker played on the professional circuit.
We passed those by and headed out to the track. (Though I snuck inside later and checked them both out.)
The betting windows have wood fronts and look much like old bank teller cubicles, save for the How to Bet sign posted below. The betting windows and three lines of chairs occupy an enclosed area that has a full view of the track, but has either A/C or heat depending on the circumstances. Outside there were tables, rows of chairs, a few benches right in front of the track and a restaurant with a patio area.
Kate and Mark had purchased a racing program while I parked and they had it out, trying to read it, figure out the symbols and the information about horses in each of 8 races on the card for the evening. Post time was at 7 pm. We missed the first race, but saw the second. A white Cadillac has a long starting gate arranged like dragon fly wings while extended. The Cadillac takes off and the horses trot up as the Cadillac heads toward the starting point about half way around the large, 5/8ths mile track. When the Cadillac hits the starting point the dragon fly wings retract and the horses take off in a flying start.
Tonight a 3/4 Honey Extraction Moon sat directly over the far straight away as the sky went from blue to dark blue to bruised red then a clear night. The air temp was about 68 degrees. A perfect night for racing.
We didn’t understand much of what was said and even less of what was written, but we did see a couple of races where a horse came from back in the field to win at the end. I noticed a guy in jeans and a windbreaker come to full attention as the horses pounded down the main straight headed for the finish line. What happened mattered to him.